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By Dante Ramos

Last night's Oscars were a chore to watch, and not just because the broadcast dragged on forever or because James Franco never warmed to his role as co-host. The larger problem was that there were no surprises; all the favorites won. Christian Bale? Check. Colin Firth? Check. "The King's Speech"? Check. Maybe Oscar punditry has gotten good enough that actually watching the show seems superfluous.

In the same spirit, Oscar prognosticators — including Silver — have figured out which awards are good predictors of the Oscar results, and which aren't. Hint: The Golden Globes aren't, and those awarded by film-critic societies are often worse. Not surprisingly, the best predictors are awards given by groups, such as the Director's Guild of America, with members who actually vote on the Oscars. Meanwhile, online betting markets, which have a decent record of predicting winners, can help round out the picture.

These signals aren't 100 percent reliable. For one thing, some plausible-sounding patterns are entirely speculative. One theory that floated the Oscar-viewing party I attended was that the Best Picture winner wins the best cinematography and best art direction awards about 98 percent of the time. In fact, the two lesser awards don't even track each other.

Furthermore, Silver himself didn't have a perfect record. Best Director was his Indiana; that Oscar went to Tom Hooper of "The King's Speech," not David Fincher of "The Social Network." Then again, that was a risky pick; Hooper was the favorite among pundits — as were all the other major winners.

This will be a quandary as Oscar punditry keeps getting better. Do viewers want to invest hours watching a sprawling, often rudderless broadcast, just on the off chance that one of the pre-show predictions happens to be wrong?